Danny Glover: Ferguson Part of Historic Violence Against Black Men
by The Daily Eye Team December 31 2014, 1:58 pm Estimated Reading Time: 1 min, 2 secsDanny Glover is addressing ongoing protests over the deaths of African American men at the hands of police officers.
“The only thing that I think is important is that they’re not caught in the moment of just protesting this incident, but that there becomes a discourse and a dialogue that looks at the historic cultural violence against men of color and the imagery created from them,” Glover told The Hollywood Reporter on Monday night at the Marrakech International Film Festival. His comments are directed at the protests in the U.S. after two federal grand juries failed to indict the police officers responsible for the deaths of teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., and Eric Garner in New York. Glover, a noted civil rights activist also pointed to the role film has played in the history of oppression. “That violence starts through film as well,” he said. “You start with Birth of a Nation, which any cinematographer would praise as a great cinematic feat, but it was the most destructive thing for African Americans. Riots broke out. There were attacks on black people. Birth of a Nation opened up a resurrection for the Ku Klux Klan.”